Many operators have turned their focus on direct-to-consumer (D2C) content services. This is the result of the fact that most of the operators' revenues of value-added services (VAS) are obtained from off-portals providing direct-to-consumer content. The off-portals are portals which are owned by third parties.
On the other hand, the operators have limited possibilities to utilize the VAS market separated from their standard data rates and services. The operators have in their communications networks all the capabilities relating to billing, subscriber identity, subscriber location, authentication data, and presence data which enable innovative third parties to design truly new services. The capabilities are offered by various servers, called herein as enabler servers. Therefore, offering the capabilities to the third parties interest the operators, but the communications networks and their capabilities are usually made for one user only, i.e. sharing the capabilities is very difficult.
A lack of appropriate capabilities is a problem especially when designing context aware services. A service whose operation is essentially dependent on a customer's presence, his/her location, and/or resources locating near the customer is termed a context aware service.
FIG. 1A shows an example of network architecture. In more detail, the example concerns the network of a communications network operator and the architecture of the network. We may assume that the network transmits IP packets. The network comprises four traffic proxies: a message router 101, a HTTP proxy 102, a download center 103, and a steaming proxy 104, as well as five enabler servers: a billing center 105, a presence server 106, an authentication server 107, a terminal system 108, and a network information system 109.
The terminal system 108 includes information about terminals such as terminal types. For example, the terminal system 108 discloses, whether a terminal is capable to receive MMS messages or multimedia streams. The terminal system 108 may include a proxy to a HLR (Home Location Register). Then terminal system 108 also discloses whether a terminal is located outside of its home network, i.e. the terminal is roaming.
The network information system 109 includes information about the communications network administrated by an operator. This information discloses, for example, whether the communications network is capable to transmit MMS messages or GPRS data. Specifically, the information determines with which network a terminal is currently connected. As an example, the terminal may be connected with a 2G, 2.5G, 3G, WLAN, or HSDPA network, or some other network. The network information system 109 may also include information about the actual available bit rate for the terminal at the current moment.
Each traffic proxy 101-104 communicates with each enabler server 105-109, which is illustrated in FIG. 1A by lines. The communication is message-based. Each enabler server offers an interface through which the information contained in the enabler server can be accessed. Each traffic proxy needs to know the interface offered by each enabler server. Because there are twenty lines illustrating the communication, there are in total twenty places where information about the interfaces needs to be maintained in order to enable communication between the traffic proxies 101-104 and the enabler servers 105-109.
Let us assume that the operator of the communications network is willing to open its network to service providers 110 so that the service providers 110 can use the operator's network in their business. Then the service providers need some sort of service interface to perform actions in the operator's network. As an example, an action may be sending MMS messages from the message router 101 to the customers of a content provider. In FIG. 1A the service providers have a service interface to the billing center 105, the presence server 106, and to the authentication server 107, i.e. there are three different service interfaces.
A first problem of the prior art is inherent in the architecture of an operator's network. In more detail, the first problem concerns the great number of interfaces. The great number of the interfaces and various details related to the interfaces make the use of the operator's network complicated. The great number of interfaces also causes that maintainability of the network may be poor. Let us assume that the billing center 105 shown in FIG. 1A is replaced with a new one which essentially differs from the original billing center. Because of these differences it may be that all four traffic proxies, the message router 101, the HTTP proxy 102, the download center 103, and the streaming proxy 104, need to be adapted to a new interface of the billing center 105.
A second problem of the prior art is lack of control means by which the operator of a communications network is able to control how the traffic proxies use capabilities offered by the enabler servers.
A third problem of the prior art is diversity of terminal types and network types. Let us assume that all customers have GMS phones without any multimedia messaging features. It is simple for a content provider to send SMS messages to the customers. Then let us assume that some customers have GMS phones capable to receive only SMS messages and some other customers have phones which are capable to receive MMS messages. We may also assume that there is a third group of customers who have IP phones capable to receive certain types of multimedia messages and/or multimedia streams. Now the content provider should send its content messages to two different types of communications networks and to three different types of terminals. The known messaging systems support badly content providers in message distribution to various types of terminals and/or various types of networks.